The Saint was too well-mannered for such crude compliments, but the girl he was watching could have been no stranger to them. From the top of her close-cropped curly golden head, down through her slim shapely figure and long slender legs to her thorough-bred ankles, she was fresh clean young American incarnate, the new type of goddess that can swim and ride and play tennis and laugh like a boy, to the horror of the conservatives on old Olympus.
Also, as happens all too seldom in real life, she was most providentially in trouble. Providentially from the point of view of any healthy footloose cavalier, that is. She was engaged in a losing argument with the driver of the carriage from which she had just alighted, a beetle-browed individual with all the assurance of a jovial brigand.
“But I made the same trip yesterday,” she was protesting indignantly, “and it was only two hundred lire!”
“One t’ousand lire,” insisted the driver. “You give-a me one t’ousand lire, please, Signora. Dat-a da right-a fare.”
It was all the opening that Simon could have asked.
He strolled up beside the girl.
“Where did you take him from?” he asked.
A pair of level gray eyes sized him up and accepted him gratefully.
“From the Excelsior.”
Simon turned to the driver.